2016年12月1日 星期四

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

"The natural love of life gave me some inward motion of joy, and I was ready to entertain a hope that this adventure might, some way or other, help to deliver me from the desolate place and condition I was in. But at the same time the reader can hardly conceive my astonishment, to behold an island in the air, inhabited by men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise or sink, or put it into progressive motion, as they pleased. But not being at that time in a disposition to philosophise upon this phenomenon, I rather chose to observe what course the island would take, because it seemed for awhile to stand still."—from "A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan" in GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (1726)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, whose full title is "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships", (1726, amended 1735), is a satire on human nature. Swift claimed that he wrote GULLIVER'S TRAVELS '\"To vex the world rather than divert it." READ more here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/175777/gullivers-travels/

這本書Gulliver’s Travels，有專家詳註本。

Jonathan Swift’s "Gulliver’s Travels" was published on this day in 1726.An immediate success on its publication in 1726, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was read, as John Gay put it, "from the cabinet council to the nursery." Dean Swift's great satire is presented here in its unexpurgated entirety. MORE here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/175777/gullivers-travels/

"But this I conceived was to be the least of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. "

"He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders."--on the Emperor of Lilliput, in "Voyage to Lilliput" from GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift

"...the trade of a soldier is held the most honourable of all others; because a soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill, in cold blood, as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can."

“The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.”